Better late than never…
Today I took some pictures in my workspace, but I wasn’t happy with the result.
Then I remembered that I still had some pictures, taken two years ago by Rozalie Hirs (April 15, 2011).
I’m sending you one of these, along with a brand new piece, recorded today.
It’s entitled “Reading Light (for Raoul Hausmann)”.
It will appear on a new cassette with the title “Songs of little Sleep”

For the final event of lyrikline’s anniversary week we asked the poets who read on Oct31 whether they’d like to write a chain poem together in the weeks before the event and present it on stage together. Six of the poets took part in this project: Daniel Samoilovich (Argentina), Babangoni Chisale (Malawi), Lutz Seiler (Germany), Remi Raji (Nigeria), Elke Erb (Germany), and Thomas Möhlmann (The Netherlands).

We have drawn the order of the poets by lot. Each of them wrote 5 lines and sent them, together with all the previous lines, to the next one. The poets decided to go for a second round with Lutz Seiler closing the circle on Oct30. Everyone was free to write in the languages of their choice. Here is the result of six weeks of poetic exchange (including the German/English translationsin Italic):

THE CHAIN POEM

1 Daniel Samoilovich

A root of heliotrope on Mars
produced a siren on the Moon.
There is a noisy waking up
of the dominoes knocked over
in triumph on the table.

This small world
Multitude queue for justice, peace and fairness
Decision makers unconcerned
Unconsciousness of the masters pinches servant’s souls
But life is worthwhile with justice, equity and fairness

but first – a wartime autumn, when things were already
run through by a nerve, kindled on the air. the hunt
fetches the gravity of the tracks across
the field distances shrink & whoever was already on
the way, disappears in his thoughts

4 Remi Raji

There is a noisy waking in the silence…
Men walk in the thickets of their thoughts
Some blessed to be thorns, some cursed to thrive.
The world runs a race on crooked limbs
And one deaf foot does not tell the other.

finally, the mountain will appear to you
as the happy path, the valley of dreams
you will walk, away from the war game, with me
into the new ceremonies of light and love.
Even the birds are singing differently, because of you.

In the thicket of desperation
Broken thoughts mingles with empty heart
Drilling anxiety, depression and marauding tears
AS construction of hope progressing
Patience heals the wounds and gouges a way through

As desperation has the thicket,
so the valley has mountain and mountain
But the mountains, it sees, have each other.
Whoever can speak can ask themselves without a doubt,
whether suffering heals suffering.

11 Thomas Möhlmann

So like snowballs I throw new pain
at you, it’s only medicine my dear,
like two giant mercies, like two marble
mountain tops gazing at each other, like
nothing’s wrong: I should simply raise one foot.

of the valleys and mountains you do not speak like
the light speaks of the birds. but then outside
something met the inside, under the window
songs beckoned down the street, they say:
we tied our legs up to time